Allison Anders

Described by one writer as a cross between a 60s earth mother and a Hell's Angels biker chick, indie filmmaker Allison Anders weathered a rough childhood and young adult life that not only encouraged...
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New Year's Eve always proves to be the most stressful night of the entire year. Between deciding who to spend this monstrously important evening with, formulating a plan for an actual activity, and, someone help us, what to wear, the night ends up being destroyed by stress before it even begins. In our experience, the pain of preparation outweighs the fun we have, so this year, we're decidedly ringing in 2015 with a bottle of wine and movies about people having a worse time than we are.
Everyone on board the Poseidon (The Poseidon Adventure &amp; Poseidon)
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No matter what your NYE plans are, they will not end as disastrously as these people's. They board a luxury ocean liner heading across the Atlantic Ocean that encounters a rogue wave, capsizing the ship. Water floods through the windows, and most of the ship's passengers die in the fabulous ballroom where they were partying just moments ago. We bet that $500 open bar is looking pretty good right about now.
Michelle Tanner (Full House)
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Queen of Speaking Truths, Michelle Tanner is understandably frustrated as she tries to grasp the appeal of this blasted holiday. Stay up way past your bedtime just to feel alone and make out with your dog? Whhhhyyyy?????
Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones's Diary)
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Bridget may not be having a worse holiday than you are, but she's at least having one that's just as bad. Her booze-soaked Celine-Dion-singing evening is exactly how we envision our New Year's Eve going down (don't judge!), and for that, we love her. Plus, when your resolution involves losing 20 pounds (obviously), properly discarding last night's panties, and avoiding romantic attachments to alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits, or perverts...you're an ideal NYE BFF.
This sledge hammer (Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve With Ryan Seacrest)
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Though not technically a person, we still would not trade places with this construction tool under any circumstances imaginable. Only Jenny McCarthy could make us envy the unfortunate sledge hammer Miley licked.
"Little" Bill Thompson (Boogie Nights)
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William H. Macy's character in Paul Thomas Anderson's Golden Age of Porn drama is often embarrassed by his porn star wife engaging in public sexual acts with other men, usually asking him to just let her do her thing. At a NYE party marking the year 1980, Bill walks in on his wife and her lover, calmly procures a gun, and then shoots both of them before turning the gun on himself. While we may have wanted to "shoot ourselves" from the stress of the night, we think he's having a much worse night than most of us.
Chandler Bing (Friends)
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Your favorite sarcastic Friend, Chandler, is openly desperate where most of us just silently suffer. As midnight rolls around, he so pines for affection and validation that he jumps up and down demanding some action. NYE lesson to be learned: be careful what you wish for.
Ted (Four Rooms)
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Tim Roth plays a hotel bellhop on his first night of work as he navigates through four different stories, directed by Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino. He deals with witches who need his semen (Anders' segment), reluctantly becomes a part of a married couple's hostage fantasy (Rockwell's), is stabbed with a syringe by children he's forced to babysit who set the room on fire before discovering a dead prostitute in the bed (Rodriguez's), and is finally paid to chop off a man's finger (Tarantino's). Needless to say, your night is looking a bit better.
Miranda Hobbes and Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City: The Movie)
These usually fabulous ladies had a bummer of a New Year's Eve. After learning that Steve cheated on Miranda and a disaster of a wedding attempt by Carrie and Big, the ladies opted for a depressing night in, each alone (though Miranda was with one of our best friends, Chinese food, while Carrie as with our other bestie, bed). Their nights may start out depressing, but they helped us realize that you're never alone as long as you have a best friend and a fiiiieeerce pajama/mink outfit combo.
Monica (200 Cigarettes)
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Monica is determined to throw an amazing party, but when nobody shows up at first, she becomes upset and a bit desperate. She does the only logical thing a person can do in that scenario: she gets so drunk that she passes out. Everyone ends up coming to her party, including Elvis Costello. She wakes up with a bunch of strangers on her floor and is thrilled, but her night positively sucked, if we do say so ourselves.
The entire cast of New Year's Eve
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No matter what happens on New Year's, at least you didn't star in this awful movie. Just be thankful for that.

Cult singer/songwriter Beck turned his star-studded Los Angeles show on Sunday (24Nov13) into a family affair when his father stepped up to conduct the orchestra backing him at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. David Campbell conducted the 61-piece Los Angeles Philharmonic at his son's third Song Reader concert.
They welcomed Jack Black, Childish Gambino, Jarvis Cocker and actor John C. Reilly to the stage, but perhaps the night's highlight came when Oscar winner Anne Hathaway joined Jenny Lewis to harmonise with Beck on the song Last Night You Were a Dream.
Aside from the performances, there were also spoken word moments delivered by lyricist Van Dyke Parks and filmmaker Allison Anders, among others.

In This Means War – a stylish action/rom-com hybrid from director McG – Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises) and Chris Pine (Star Trek) star as CIA operatives whose close friendship is strained by the fires of romantic rivalry. Best pals FDR (Pine) and Tuck (Hardy) are equally accomplished at the spy game but their fortunes diverge dramatically in the dating realm: FDR (so nicknamed for his obvious resemblance to our 32nd president) is a smooth-talking player with an endless string of conquests while Tuck is a straight-laced introvert whose love life has stalled since his divorce. Enter Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) a pretty plucky consumer-products evaluator who piques both their interests in separate unrelated encounters. Tuck meets her via an online-dating site FDR at a video-rental store. (That Lauren is tech-savvy enough to date online but still rents movies in video stores is either a testament to her fascinating mix of contradictions or more likely an example of lazy screenwriting.)
When Tuck and FDR realize they’re pursuing the same girl it sparks their respective competitive natures and they decide to make a friendly game of it. But what begins as a good-natured rivalry swiftly devolves into romantic bloodsport with both men using the vast array of espionage tools at their disposal – from digital surveillance to poison darts – to gain an edge in the battle for Lauren’s affections. If her constitutional rights happen to be violated repeatedly in the process then so be it.
Lauren for her part remains oblivious to the clandestine machinations of her dueling suitors and happily basks in the sudden attention from two gorgeous men. Herein we find the Reese Witherspoon Dilemma: While certainly desirable Lauren is far from the irresistible Helen of Troy type that would inspire the likes of Tuck and FDR to risk their friendship their careers and potential incarceration for. At several points in This Means War I found myself wondering if there were no other peppy blondes in Los Angeles (where the film is primarily set) for these men to pursue. Then again this is a film that wishes us to believe that Tom Hardy would have trouble finding a date so perhaps plausibility is not its strong point.
When Lauren needs advice she looks to her boozy foul-mouthed best friend Trish (Chelsea Handler). Essentially an extension of Handler’s talk-show persona – an acquired taste if there ever was one – Trish’s dialogue consists almost exclusively of filthy one-liners delivered in rapid-fire succession. Handler does have some choice lines – indeed they’re practically the centerpiece of This Means War’s ad campaign – but the film derives the bulk of its humor from the outrageous lengths Tuck and FDR go to sabotage each others’ efforts a raucous game of spy-versus-spy that carries the film long after Handler’s shtick has grown stale.
Business occasionally intrudes upon matters in the guise of Heinrich (Til Schweiger) a Teutonic arms dealer bent on revenge for the death of his brother. The subplot is largely an afterthought existing primarily as a means to provide third-act fireworks – and to allow McGenius an outlet for his ADD-inspired aesthetic proclivities. The film’s action scenes are edited in such a manic quick-cut fashion that they become almost laughably incoherent. In fairness to McG he does stage a rather marvelous sequence in the middle of the film in which Tuck and FDR surreptitiously skulk about Lauren's apartment unaware of each other's presence carefully avoiding detection by Lauren who grooves absentmindedly to Montel Jordan's "This Is How We Do It." The whole scene unfolds in one continuous take – or is at least craftily constructed to appear as such – captured by one very agile steadicam operator.
Whatever his flaws as a director McG is at least smart enough to know how much a witty script and appealing leads can compensate for a film’s structural and logical deficiencies. He proved as much with Charlie’s Angels a film that enjoys a permanent spot on many a critic’s Guilty Pleasures list and does so again with This Means War. The film coasts on the chemistry of its three co-stars and only runs into trouble when the time comes to resolve its romantic competition which by the end has driven its male protagonists to engage in all manner of underhanded and duplicitous activities. This Means War being a commercial film – and likely an expensive one at that – Witherspoon's heroine is mandated to make a choice and McG all but sidesteps the whole thorny matter of Tuck and FDR’s unwavering dishonesty not to mention their craven disregard for her privacy. (They regularly eavesdrop on her activities.) For all their obvious charms the truth is that neither deserves Lauren – or anything other than a lengthy jail sentence for that matter.
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If a major motion picture studio gave you $50 million to make the movie of your choice what would it be like? If you’re producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner and writers Simon Pegg and Nick Frost it’d be a loving lampoon of geek culture and an homage to the films of the Spielberg/Lucas revolution but nostalgia is both an advantage and disadvantage in director Greg Mottola’s Paul.
Pegg and Frost star as a pair of nerds from across the pond who fulfill lifelong dreams when they fly to San Diego for the annual Mecca of nerdom Comic-Con. The doofy duo extend their trip to tour America’s extraterrestrial hot spots including Area 51 where they pick up an unexpected alien hitchhiker on the run from the proverbial men in black. Across the country they go getting into trouble picking up more passengers and building bromantic bonds as the little green man Paul inches closer to his escape from planet Earth and the shadowy government official who has been exploiting his knowledge of the universe since he crash landed in Wyoming over 60 years ago.
Fan-favorite filmmakers since 2004’s Shaun of the Dead Pegg and Frost have been making geek chic for years now and continue to create identifiable roles for themselves while finding humorous ways to write their like-minded friends into their movies. Their collection of wacky characters is charming if incredibly derivative but for better or worse they are the heart and soul of the film. Jason Bateman Kristen Wiig Bill Hader and Jo Lo Truglio turn in fun performances but I expected a bit more from the Jane Lynch David Koechner and Sigourney Weaver cameos. Still Seth Rogen’s vocal performance as Paul adds significant layers to an already adorable alien and enlivens the adequately rendered CG character.
The comedy is surprisingly sweet and doesn’t bite like Mottola’s Superbad though there are enough religious jabs and signs of anti-establishment fervor to call it mildly subversive. Lack of laughs isn’t the issue here; lack of originality is. Mottola is too dependent on pop-culture references and inside jokes pertaining to E.T. Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind so much so that the film ultimately becomes a parody of itself as its storyline mirrors that of Steven Spielberg’s massive 1982 blockbuster (in this world the movie mogul actually consults the incarcerated alien for inspiration for his beloved family film). While these nods are all amusing they’re not enough to carry the film and Mottola/Frost/Pegg offer little else. At its worst Paul will give you a reason to revisit those classic sci-fi staples and remember the good old days. At best it provides a few mindless chuckles and gives you good reason to give the geek next to you a great big hug.

The Sundance people have announced the list of films that will be showcased in its Premieres, Frontier, Midnight, Native Forum and World Cinema categories for the annual festival.
"My First Mister," the directorial debut by actress Christine Lahti, will kick off the 10-day event. And works from such helmers as Michael Apted ("The World Is Not Enough") Richard Linklater ("Slacker") and Allison Anders ("Mi Vida Loca") are among the films that are spotlighted in the fest's Premieres category.
The lineup for the Drama, Documentary and American Spectrum categories was issued Tuesday as well.
The Sundance Film Festival takes place Jan. 18-28 in Park City, Utah.
For the complete schedule, go to Sundance Film Festival's official Web site at www.sundance.org.

Michael Stipe's status as an alt-rock icon may have waned a bit, but he's not crying in his chamomile tea about it. According to today's Variety, the R.E.M. frontman and his partners have sold a huge stake in their two film-production companies, Single Cell Pictures and C-Hundred Film Corp. (yes, he's a budding movie mogul, too) to RSUB, a New York-based digital entertainment company, which will get the increasingly valuable Internet rights to all movies they make.
Says Michael Simon, RSUB president: "They (Stipe et al.) needed some cash, and now they get financial and digital resources."
LUCASFILM SUES RAP MOGUL: LucasFilm is suing rap impresario Dr. Dre, alleging that the recording star employed Lucas’ trademarked THX Deep Note (you know, that annoying deep note before every movie at the theater) on his album "Dr. Dre 2001," MTV News reports today. Also named in the lawsuit are Interscope Records and Aftermath Entertainment.
LOOKING INTO THE PAST: Director Allison Anders ("Gas Food Lodging") is working on what is her most personal project to date: "Things Behind the Sun," a semi-autobiographical story about a rape she suffered during adolescence, according to the Reporter. The film is slated to begin shooting in Florida in June.
EVEN HE HAS HIS OWN WEB SITE: Action star Steven Seagal has launched his own Web site, StevenSeagal.com, and announced Wednesday that the site will be exclusive home of his video "Aikido: The Path Beyond Thought" before its release in the spring. The site has already received 15 billion hits since this news brief was published.
TOM CRUISE’S PRIVATE PARTS: This breaking item from MSNBC.com: Talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell was "really uncomfortable," according to one avid Rosie viewer, when actress Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn’s daughter (who was on the gabfest to promote her new film "Gossip"), revealed that Tom Cruise ’s private parts can be seen, if freeze framed, in 1983’s "All the Right Moves." Uh, hello?! This "juicy tidbit" is so 1983.
NOT VERY HAPPY: Judy Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft is criticizing her mother’s biographer, saying that Gerald Clarke’s well-received "Get Happy" contains "out and out lies," MSNBC.com reports. Luft is also upset that the biographer never tried to reach her. Poor thing.

Title

Feature film directorial and screenwriting debut, "Border Radio" (b&w, 16mm), co-directed and co-written with fellow UCLA film students Kurt Voss and Dean Lent

First feature film credit, as a production assistant on Wim Wenders' film, "Paris, Texas"

Family settled in Los Angeles when Anders was 15; stepfather at one point pulled a gun on her (date approximate)

Reteamed with Voss to co-write and co-direct the comedy-drama "Sugar Town", about a group of aging musicians; premiered at the Sundance Film Festival

Was accepted by, and attended, UCLA's film school, beginning in the early 1980s

Awarded a MacArthur "genius" grant ($255,000)

Was gang-raped at age 12 (date approximate)

Raised in Kentucky until father left family when Anders was five; mother moved her around a great deal thereafter

Was placed in a mental hospital in Los Angeles at age 15 because of suicidal feelings and a retreat into a fantasy world; depression exacerbated by, among other things, the widely circulated rumors of the death of her favorite Beatle, Paul McCartney

Worked as a barmaid in London until she got pregnant; when lover did not want her to have baby, moved back to Los Angeles alone and supported herself and child with welfare and with work as a waitress

First solo directorial effort, "Gas Food Lodging", for which she also wrote the screenplay, based on a novel by Richard Peck; Lent served as director of photography

Attended junior college (dates approximate)

With Voss, co-wrote "Things Behind the Sun", a drama about a young female rock musician coping with a rape; also directed; premiered at Sundance Film Festival; sold to Showtime; inspired by events from Anders' own life

Wrote and directed "Grace of My Heart", about a female singer struggling to make it in the music business in the 1950s and 1960s; executive produced by Martin Scorsese

Won praise for "Mi Vida Loca/My Crazy Life", her authentic picture about Latina gang members; shot film only a month after the Los Angeles riots of 1992

Moved to the Echo Park section of Los Angeles shortly after graduating from UCLA; supported herself and her daughters for a time with money from a screenwriting grant she had received

Executive produced "Lover Girl", on which Lent was director of photography

Actor Hugh Grant backed out of Anders' "Paul Is Dead" project a scant month before shooting was to start, and funding disappeared with him

Moved to London at age 18 to live with an English-born philosophy student she had met on the Greyhound she took to move back to Kentucky (date approximate)

Dropped out of high school at age 17; headed back to Kentucky by bus to live with other relatives (date approximate)

Signed two-year deal with Miramax Films to write, produce and direct features

Helmed and scripted the "Strange Brew" segment of "Four Rooms"

Became fascinated with the films of Wim Wenders; sent the filmmaker dozens of letters, some of which were as long as 60 pages, as well as audiocassettes of music she liked; Wenders only wrote back a few times, but the two began to communicate by telephone

Returned to junior college for another two years after the birth of her second daughter (dates approximate)

Summary

Described by one writer as a cross between a 60s earth mother and a Hell's Angels biker chick, indie filmmaker Allison Anders weathered a rough childhood and young adult life that not only encouraged an escapist penchant for making up characters but also an insider's sympathy for the strong but put-upon women who have peopled her films. Abandoned by her father at age five, sexually abused by a number of different men while growing up and gang-raped at the age of 12, she eventually retreated into a fantasy relationship with "dead Paul" (McCartney), a flight of fancy which helped get her admitted to a mental hospital at 15. Anders, who had written prior to being institutionalized, rediscovered her voice with the help of a poet she met "inside" and learned "to make people who aren't there really stand up and talk." At 17, she dropped out of high school in Los Angeles and ventured back to the rural Kentucky of her birth, moving soon afterwards to London to live with the man who would father her first child.

Name

Role

Comments

Dominique

Half-Sister

born c. 1969

Rachel Anders

Mother

Devon Anders

Daughter

born in July 1977

Tiffany Anders

Daughter

born in August 1974

Reuben Anders

Son

adopted; born c. 1990; mother Nica Rogers was a Latina gang member who had played a small role and served as one of Anders' advisors on "Mi Vida Loca" (1994) when she died of a drug overdose at age 19 before movie's completion; Anders brought home the motherless child and eventually began adoption procedures

Luanna Anders

Sister

born c. 1957; not to be confused with actress Luana Anders who died in 1996

member of the band Duran Duran; had relationship with Anders in the 1980s and stayed friends after they broke up; supplied the music for Anders' film "Mi Vida Loca" (1994) and starred in "Sugar Town" (1999)

Kurt Voss

Companion

involved with Anders in the 1980s; classmate of Anders at the UCLA film school; co-wrote and co-directed (with Anders and Dean Lent), "Border Radio" (1987) and "Sugar Town" (1999)

Education

Name

University of California at Los Angeles' School of Theater, Film and Television

Notes

Received a Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science in 1986.

According to Elle (July 1996), Anders once "did phone sex to finance a project and could do it again."

"When I was a teen-ager, everybody told me being an unwed mother was going to ruin my life. And in fact it was my opportunity." --Allison Anders to The New York Times, July 26, 1992.

"There's a certain kind of feminist who doesn't like my stuff. And there's enough of 'em to to, you know, bum me out. But I always felt like feminism was about empowering yourself by knowing yourself. And that means not just exploring work, but also relationships and desire. But for some reason, there's this attitude--which is changing a little bit--that if you're looking for intimacy with a man, that's like selling out your feminism, which I think is so bizarre. In Hollywood, you can do two types of women characters: the objectified female, who's always saying something smart, or the butch female. I feel like we encountered that a couple times making this film ('Grace of My Heart')--people wanted Denise to behave more like a guy. You know, being bitter and aggressive, as though somehow that's strength that's very male." --Allison Anders in Time Out New York, September 11-18, 1996.

"The first record I bought was 'Johnny Get Angry' by Joanie Sommers, a good start for a feminist: 'I want a brave man/I want a cave man' . . . I learned to write female characters from Paul McCartney's songwriting. I'm amazed at how he gets into women's minds: a young woman going her own way in 'She's Leaving Home', or a lonely old woman in 'Eleanor Rigby'--and 'For No One', the most incredible example, where the guy being dumped chooses to get inside her feelings, writing the song from her point of view. My other favourites were The Shangri-Las: those amazing narrative songs about rebellious teenagers. I love the voiceover on 'I Can Never Go Home Any More', it's so melodramatic, pure Douglas Sirk. I'd study the sleeves of my favourite records for hours and wonder who these people (Barry-Greenwich, Goffin-King) were. When Carole King's 'Tapestry' came out, you could suddenly connect her to the writer of 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow'." --Anders to Sight and Sound, April 1997.